


Call me tomorrow

by silveryogis



Category: Karneval
Genre: Fluff, M/M, gareki is at school and yogi is emotional but what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:19:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveryogis/pseuds/silveryogis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, being in love with Gareki is really really hard (but mostly, it's nice).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call me tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> I think about Gareki being at school and Yogi missing him a lot so here we are (from tumblr)

Yogi misses Gareki.

He misses him a  _lot_.

Sometimes he thinks he might miss him too much; he thinks about him all the time, when he’s eating breakfast by himself and pushing a plate of sausage instinctively across the table where Gareki would usually sit, when he’s laying on his bed and writing letters (not to Nyanperona anymore, he’s decided that if Gareki’s gone, he should be writing letters to him, because who does he think about more?), when he’s sitting in front of Hirato and taking orders and even when he’s fighting, he thinks about Gareki. He wonders what he’s doing. He wonders if Gareki misses him, too.

Yogi smiles to himself. He probably does.

It’s always the quiet moments, though, when he misses him the most. When he’s doing menial tasks, like organizing storage closets or setting the table for dinner. Sometimes, Tsukumo helps him and he can tell when she notices the quiet look on his face, the one where his eyes turn down just a little, and a small and solemn smile sets over his face. When she notices, she always touches his arm, like she knows how much he wishes he was setting the table for one more person.

He tries not to talk about it too much.

It’s always around three in the morning that he finds himself standing outside Tsukumo’s door, arms crossed over his chest, an empty feeling settling uncomfortably where he thinks his heart should be beating. She always opens the door, rubbing her eyes, and asks him what’s wrong. It’s always the same thing. He misses Gareki, too much to sleep, and he can’t stop worrying about whether he misses him too, or not. 

It’s probably stupid, and Tsukumo could probably laugh and tell him to go back to bed and stop worrying, but she never does. She always lets him in, and he sits on the end of her bed and says everything,  _everything_ that’s on his mind until he falls asleep there, curled around a pillow. She always listens. Sometimes she tries to help, but mostly, she understands that he’s not really looking for help. 

There are a few times Yogi tries to call him, but he never answers. His voicemail is still someone else’s voice, a bored, automized voice saying the digits of his phone number one by one, explaining carefully that he’s not available. Please leave a message. Sometimes, Yogi does. He tries to keep it casual, like Tsukumo always tells him he should, but it’s always messy.  _Gareki-kun, I miss you. Please call me back. How are you doing? You don’t have to call me back if you don’t want to. I’ve been doing well—I miss you. Do you miss—call me back, if you get a chance. Keep studying! Do your best! I miss you._

The worst thing about it, about Gareki being gone, is that it seems like Yogi is the only one who really notices that he’s gone. Everyone, Hirato, Tsukumo, even Nai—they all go about their daily business like it’s not strange that Gareki’s not there. 

For Yogi, it feels like the world has stopped.

It’s four in the morning, and since he can’t sleep, Yogi decides to try again. One more time. If he answers, Yogi tells himself, if Gareki answers, then that means he’s sad, too. If he answers, just this one time, then he misses Yogi just as much as he misses him.

Just this one time.

He taps Gareki’s contact and stares at that little green call icon for a few seconds before he taps it and puts his phone to his ear—he stares up at the ceiling where he’s stuck a few glow in the dark stars. Some of them have faded, some of them haven’t.

The phone rings feebly from the other end three times before it stops, and all Yogi hears is himself breathing.

"…What."

He almost shoots straight up in his bed.

"Gareki—Gareki-kun?"

"What do you want." Yogi hears Gareki yawn. "It’s four in the goddamn morning."

"You never answer your phone, Gareki-kun…"

"Yogi." There’s a pause. Yogi closes his eyes at the way his name sounds with Gareki’s voice wrapped around it. "Why are you calling me."

"I…" Yogi nuzzles his head against the pillow, and pulls his blanket over his shoulders. "I just miss you. That’s all."

"You call me three times a day."

"You never answer…"

Yogi hears Gareki sigh. The phone makes his voice sound cracked and far away, but still, he’s here, in his ear, talking, breathing, existing. 

"I’m busy, you know," he says, softly. Like he regrets it, just a little. Maybe he’s tired. "I can’t always pick up the damn phone."

"It’s really lonely without you," Yogi admits. He leaves a pause after he says it, presses his phone closer to his ear just to feel that much more of Gareki’s presence. 

"Well that’s stupid."

"I don’t think it’s stupid."

"Just stop missing me, then."

"It’s not that easy…"

"Yogi."

"Gareki-kun?"

There’s a beat. Yogi waits, hopes that for once, just this once, Gareki will say something sweet to him, that he’ll tell him he misses him too, that he just wants to be next to him again, breathing in the smell of his hair. That it feels like the world has stopped.

"I’ll call you back tomorrow."

His heart sinks.

Yogi answers him very quietly. “Oh…okay, Gareki-kun.” 

"It’s four in the morning."

His voice is small. “I know.”

"I have class in the morning."

"I’m sorry."

He wants to give up on him. He wants to get mad, he wants to tell him that he can’t  _do_ this, that he can’t keep brushing him away, that he can’t keep saying his name in the soft, quiet way he says it only to tell him that he’ll call back tomorrow—an empty promise, Yogi can tell he just wants to go to sleep, he can tell he doesn’t really care, he can’t  _really_ —and he starts to feel so stupid, so small, that he actually starts to feel tears welling up in his eyes—and isn’t  _that_ even worse?

He wants to give up on Gareki, but he can’t.

There’s a long pause, and all he does his hold his breath and try not to feel like their relationship is falling apart. It’s hard. It’s so hard. 

"…You’re…you’re doing alright, right?" Gareki asks after a long while. "Everything’s fine where you are. Right?"

"What?" Yogi doesn’t know what to make of the halted, almost awkward sound of Gareki’s question. "Yeah…yeah, everything’s fine. Nai learned how to do some math yesterday, we think he’s catching on pretty well now…"

"I’m not asking about Nai," Gareki cuts him off. His voice is short. Tired. "I’m asking about you."

"Me?"

"I’m asking how you’re doing."

"Oh!" Yogi licks over his lips, and shifts the phone to his other ear. "I’m doing okay—Hirato’s been sending me on more missions, so I guess that’s a good thing, even if I don’t like them very much…um, that’s about it, really." He pauses. "I miss you." He pauses again. "I miss you a lot."

"…I know."

"Do you…"

"…Yeah."

"Really?"

He listens to Gareki breathe. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I miss you.”

Yogi smiles, and sits up. When Gareki says that, everything he’s been worrying about fades away, a little. Gareki’s good at lying, and Yogi’s not particularly good at being able to tell when people are lying, but he knows Gareki, and he knows how hard it is for him to say the things he means, and he knows he means it. He thinks about Gareki, sitting in his bed at school, holding his phone to his ear and missing him. 

"I’m glad," he says, hoping Gareki can hear the smile in his voice. "I’m really glad."

Gareki yawns. “Look, it really is four in the morning. I have class in three hours. I’ll—” he yawns one more time “—I call you tomorrow.”

"Okay." Yogi lies back down. He thinks he believes him, this time. "You really will?"

"If it stops you from calling me at  _four in the morning_.” 

Yogi smiles again, but only because he can hear the tired smirk in Gareki’s voice, and he can see his face, exhausted but just a little amused anyway, in spite of anything else. 

"I just couldn’t sleep—I miss you! And I love you, that’s—that’s all I really wanted to say."

Gareki yawns. Yogi’s phone gets a little hot against his ear. “I love you too,” he responds, mumbling. “Get some sleep.”

Yogi tells him goodnight, and Gareki says goodnight back, and he ends the call and keeps his phone next to him for the rest of the night. He sleeps easier, and when he wakes up, he has a call from Gareki to look forward to, and he looks forward to it all day.

When Gareki does finally call, he does it just as Yogi is going to bed. Yogi tells him he misses him, and Gareki admits that he does too. They say goodnight. Yogi goes to sleep and dreams about him, and imagines that Gareki does the same.

After that, it becomes a habit. Gareki calls him at the end of the day, and they say goodnight to each other. It doesn’t make Yogi miss him any less, but it helps. It helps a lot. It feels a little less like the world has stopped, or at least, like he can keep moving.

It’s the quiet moments that make him miss him the most, but it’s when his voice comes quiet through the speaker of his phone, saying to him “ _Goodnight, I love you_ ,” that he loves him the most.


End file.
